Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
If your car insurance contract runs out on January 1, there’s only one week left to switch to a different provider. While numerous factors determine the premium you pay, there’s one that you can’t get round - your place of residence.
While shopping around can usually land you a better deal, some people should resign themselves to higher premiums - calculations from comparison website Verivox show that drivers in some districts and cities in Germany end up paying almost 50 percent more for their car insurance. We take a look at the most expensive and the cheapest areas in the country.
For the study, Verivox analysed all insurance contracts concluded through their portal over the last two years to compile a map of car insurance prices in Germany. Their data showed that nine out of 10 of the most expensive areas were in the southern federal state of Bavaria.
The district of Rottal-Inn tops the list of the most expensive areas by a considerable distance: there, 40 percent of motorists pay more than the national average. In neighbouring Rosenheim, car owners pay 30 percent above the average. Third place goes to Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia, the only city outside Bavaria to make it into the top 10.
According to the experts at Verivox, Bavaria tops the list because areas like Upper and Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate experience a higher-than-average number of accidents. This means they have bad scores for the regional class (Regionalklasse) gradation that is used to help calculate insurance premiums.
Other factors also play a role. According to Verivox, prices are also higher in Bavaria because people there drive cars with more horsepower than the national average; they also tend to own more expensive vehicles (traditionally, BMW has had a particularly high market share) and, in rural regions especially, drive more.
Nonetheless, cheaper premiums in other parts of Bavaria, like Franconia, mean that the free state is actually not the most expensive in Germany overall. Instead, that honour goes to Hamburg, where drivers pay 21 percent above the national average for their car insurance. Hamburg is followed by Berlin and Saarland, with Bavaria coming in fourth overall.
On average, drivers in Hamburg pay a whopping 150 euros more per month than in Brandenburg, where premiums are 12 percent below the national average. This makes Brandenburg the cheapest state overall. Things are particularly favourable in the district of Elbe-Elster, where drivers pay 20 percent less. The district of Sömmerda in Thuringia is just as cheap.
As you might expect, in total, 16 of the 20 cheapest districts are in East Germany. However, this is not just because they have good regional class scores. It’s also because the population in East Germany as a whole is older than in West Germany - and those with more driving experience generally have lower premiums.
But no matter how old you are or where you live, it’s definitely possible to save a euro or two - as much as 25 percent, Verivox estimates - by shopping around, rather than sticking with the same insurance company year after year. If you find a better deal, make sure you terminate your old contract before November 30!